


beginning of the end

by Little_Firestar84



Category: The 4400
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, One Shot, Romance, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 00:44:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15061334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Firestar84/pseuds/Little_Firestar84
Summary: She pushed wayward coils of his dark hair out of his forehead and smiled politely at Tom. “Well,” she said, “it’s getting late.”He shot an amused look at the clock. “Really?” he said, putting down his wineglass on the table.





	beginning of the end

**Author's Note:**

> Set post the follow-up novel that ends the 4400 sage, "Promises Broken", that sees Tom and Diana living and working with the 4400, hunted by the US.  
> The first part s actually from the book itself, so you know...

_ Tom flopped onto Diana’s couch with a satisfied sigh. “Great dinner,” he said. “When did you learn to cook like that?” _

_ “I’m not  _ _ totally _ _ useless in the kitchen,” she protested. “Though, to be honest, rigatoni Fiorentina’s kind of easy.” Holding up the mostly drained bottle of Pinotage, she asked, “More wine?” _

_ “Please,” Tom said, lifting his glass. _

_ She refilled it with half of what was left, and then poured the rest of the robust red wine into her own glass. A distinctive aroma of candle smoke still lingered from the just-snuffed tapers on the dining room table, and a faint jazz melody drifted from the speakers beside the TV as Diana settled onto the opposite end of the sofa from Tom. _

_ Cocking his head toward the music, he asked, “What are we listening to?” _

_ “Ella Fitzgerald,” she said. _

_ He grinned. “From Maia’s collection?” _

_ She smiled back. “How’d you guess?” _

_ They sat back, sipped their wine, and listened to Ella’s soft and sweet crooning for a while. _

_ During a lull between songs, Tom sighed. “What a day… I can’t believe that I’m in here, playing sheriff to Jordan’s insane-asylum utopia.” _

_ Raising her glass, Diana said, “Let me know if you need a trusty deputy, Sheriff.” _

_“Consider yourself volunteered.”_

_ As Tom sipped more wine, Diana said, “I have an odd moment of my own to share with you.” She shifted forward to the middle of the couch, reached over to the coffee table, put down her glass, and flipped open the lid of a cherry-wood curio box. _

_ Inside the velvet-lined box was the syringe of promicin that her daughter had given her a few days earlier. _

_ At the sight of it, Tom sat up and moved to the middle of the sofa, beside Diana, facing the box. _

_ “Maia handed me this after I woke up from our Yellowstone op,” Diana said. “She says she won’t come home until I take the shot. When I told her I was immune, she said this was a new formula, something stronger. Is this what she gave to you?” _

_ He nodded. “Yeah, I think it is. She wasn’t kidding about it being potent. It gave me an ability in under an hour.” Throwing a worried look at Diana, he asked, “You’re not thinking of taking it, are you?” _

_ “Maybe,” she said, more defensively than she’d intended. “I mean, I want my daughter to come home, and if this is the only way …” She let her voice trail off, since she was certain that Tom understood. “Besides, you’re hardly one to talk. After all your rants against promicin, and all your speeches about choosing free will over prophecy, you still stuck the needle in  _ _ your _ _ arm.” Narrowing her eyes with mock suspicion, she pointed at him and said, “What I want to know is, how the hell did Maia talk you into taking it when you wouldn’t listen to your own son? Why trust her vision instead of his?” _

_ Tom averted his gaze. Diana imagined gears turning inside his skull as he considered his reply. Then he took a deep breath, turned his head, and looked into her eyes. _

_ “I did it for you,” he said. “Maia said if I didn’t take the shot, I’d have to watch you die.” His voice faltered as he added, “I took the shot so I wouldn’t lose you.” _

_ Awkward silence fell between them. Staring into his eyes, Diana suddenly became aware of just how close together she and Tom were. A romantically charged, almost-magnetic sensation passed between them. As they drifted incrementally closer, Diana suddenly wasn’t sad to know that Maia was miles away and not coming home tonight. She kept waiting for Tom to pull back, but he seemed to be as swept up in the moment as Diana. _

She pushed wayward coils of his dark hair out of his forehead and smiled politely at Tom. “Well,” she said, “it’s getting late.”

He shot an amused look at the clock. “Really?” he said, putting down his wineglass on the table. Diana bit her lips, and, tentatively, met Tom’s eyes, and in his dark orbs, she saw –reflected- everything they had been for each other – everything they had gone through together through the years. 

He wasn’t the same man she had met those morning, so many years before – he had changed, and so did she. She suddenly remembered, as shivers run through her body, an evening years before, long before Promise City – an evening so similar to the one she was living, and yet so different. 

She had been having dinner with Marco and Maia, shortly before she and the young man would start a tentative relationship. She remembered her daughter, assuring that she would have preferred the young man to “ _him_ ”. Not for the first time she wondered how much her daughter knew, how much she had foreseen. She and Marco hadn’t lasted, but did the child know that her mother’s heart would have always belonged, a tiny little bit, to her partner? Has she seen this very evening, knew the desire that would have crushed her mother’s soul?

“Cold?” Tom asked, so close she could feel his hot breath on her lips. Diana shook her head, lowering her lids, and closing the distance between them at the same time as Tom did, as he was reading her mind.

It was a peck – just a peck, and it barely lasted a second, and yet it shattered her world. When they parted, their noses touching, she tenderly skimmed his cheek with his five o’clock shadow. Her touch was tentative, delicate – as she was scared that he would break… or that he was just a mirage.

“Why did you do that?” She said, her voice so low it was almost a whisper. 

“Because I wanted to,” he admitted, smiling slowly. “For the longest time.”

Diana smiled in return – a smile so bright Tom thought she was actually emitting light, that she was the sun or the brightest star in the evenings. His silly mind, filled with teenage love despite his age, even wondered if she hadn’t taken the shot already and had developed an ability, but then he laughed at loud, almost breaking the moment.

_ Of course  _ she hadn’t suddenly developed a power. She just seemed more beautiful, brighter, because it was how he saw her – because, he realized with glee and pride, _he_ filled her with joy.

“What’s so funny?” She asked, still merely inches apart.

“Nothing,” he shook his head, with dreamy eyes, “absolutely nothing.”

He kissed her again, but, this time, it wasn’t sweet or nice, but rather… _ardent_. She could feel the heat from his body, so familiar and yet so foreign. His rich scent intoxicated her, and she succumbed to her own senses. She lived in the moment, and succumbed to passion. One of her hands went to the back of his neck, bringing him even closer, the other run through his hair, exploring their soft texture. 

Tom _purred_ against her lips, prisoner to pleasure and desire, and all hell broke loose for Diana, as the wanton woman was suddenly unleashed, together with years of pent-up desire and it suddenly hit her.

She wanted him - wanted to feel his lips on her skin, all over her body, feel his weight on top of her. She wanted to look into Tom’s eyes as he came, her sex squeezing him for everything he was worth. 

Smiling mischievously, Diana stood, and took the few steps that separated her from her bedroom. She turned when she didn’t feel Tom at her back, and looked at her long-time partner and friend with a lifted eyebrow – and a sexy glint in her eyes. 

Tom was still sitting on her couch, and was looking, dumb-struck, at her – almost as he didn’t understand what was going on.

Like he didn’t believe that it was true. 

She smiled, and laughed, and shook her head, her dark hair dancing in soft waves over her shoulder. She started unbuttoning her shirt, mechanically; never breaking eye-contact with the man she had wanted for so long, without never fully realising it.

“Do I have to undress you?” She asked, as the shirt fell from her shoulders, turning into a pool of fabric at her feet.

Tom smiled. “Bossy – I like it in a woman.”

“Somehow,” her pants joined the shirt on her floor. “I didn’t doubt it.”

She was in lingerie on hr bedroom’s doorstep, and walked backward towards her bed, looking at Tom – not to make sure he would follow her, nor to invite him in, but take in the sight of him, joining her, body and soul, for the first time.

He took off his shirt from the head, without bothering with buttons, needing the skin on skin contact as soon as possible – someone knowing that it would have been a whole other thing from anyone he had ever been with. 

It would have been different – and new – and the beginning of the end and of the rest of his life. 

It would have been… forever.His last love. 

Naked, he run into Diana’s arms, laughing and smiling together as they playfully disocered each other anew for the first time. 

The first time of many others. 

The beginning of the rest of his life.


End file.
